Saturday, November 29, 2003

A little while ago, I linked to a post by Dean Esmay, where he explained why he renounced Christianity and is an atheist. And I said it made me sad, because I think that Dean is missing out on the best part of life and what I believe is the reason we exist - to have faith in, a relationship with, and worship the God who created us.

Then, yesterday, I saw his latest post about faith and politics, and I was reminded why I have Dean linked and why I read him pretty regularly. A snippet:

I seem to be one of the few utterly non-theistic, non-religious people I know who has absolutely no fear or loathing of Christianity. Unlike many, I also have absolutely none of the fear of the “mixing of politics and faith” that seems to scare the bejeezus out of some intellectuals. Indeed, as I think I’ve said many times before, I believe such sentiments bespeak a not-so-subtly-hidden anti-Christian bias in much of America today--a bias that some Christians have internalized, and that’s come about mostly due to lack of reasonable education about religion in most of our schools and universities here in the U.S.

Indeed, I think it not only defensible, but actually self-evident that religion has had a very positive influence throughout human history, one that greatly outweighs its negatives. I think the positive influence of both Judaism and Christianity on the West are even more obvious. I think it’s cheap and shallow to concentrate on the negatives of faith, and not give equally serious contemplation to the positives. Especially when those positives are so profound and lasting--and the record of atheism, agnosticism, etc. so mixed and murky.

While I think that Dean is missing out on having a personal faith, he clearly understands that there’s no need to attempt to eradicate it altogether from the public arena. He’s a rarity amongst the irreligious. The rest of the essay is good, go read it. (Note: I haven’t read the comment thread, so I have no idea what’s there.)